Zheng had also become tired of the
constant nagging from his family and pressure to get married, so he turned to a
robot he built late last year and named Yingying.

After two months of “dating”, he
donned a black suit to “marry” her at a ceremony attended by his mother and
friends at the weekend in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

While not
officially recognised by the authorities, the union had all the trappings of a
typical Chinese wedding, with Yingying’s head covered with a red cloth in
accordance with local tradition.

China has one of the worst gender
gaps in the world, mainly due to sex-selective abortions after the introduction
of the country’s widely criticised one-child
policy, which for decades controlled how many children each family could
have.

There are 113.5
men for every 100 women in China, according to the latest figures
published by the World Economic Forum. The gender imbalance, coupled with
changing attitudes towards marriage among the country’s middle class, means
many men will never find wives.

For now
Yingying can only read some Chinese characters and images and speak a few
simple words, but Zheng plans to upgrade
his “bride” to be able to walk and do household chores. Until then he has
to carry the 30kg robot to move her.

Reaction
in China to the
union has been mixed, with some social media users mocking Zheng and others
wondering if it is all a publicity stunt.

“You won’t
have her mother looking down on you, you don’t have the pressure to buy a home
and you get to save money and energy,” one user wrote on WeChat, a popular
social network.

“He’ll
slowly get old, his face will become wrinkled and his hair will grow white –
but will he upgrade her to grow old, or just to be prettier?” another user
asked.

Stories of robots replacing humans is
commonplace in China,
most notably in a smattering of restaurants where the waiters are automated.
However, the machines rarely
live up to expectations.

Zheng previously worked at Huawei,
the Chinese smartphone company, before quitting to focus on an artificial
intelligence startup.